


Till Death Do Us Part

by Atunenamedclara



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Character Death, F/M, Other, Sad, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 22:51:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5946256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atunenamedclara/pseuds/Atunenamedclara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara Oswald AU following a fixed point in time created by Face The Raven</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clara Oswald

*CLARA*

17th February 2015

I flicked through the post idly, passing over bills, grinning at a postcard from Nan who was up in Yorkshire for the week, and sifting takeout menus into a pile for the bin later.

My phone beeped to signal an incoming text which I looked at as I shrugged on my coat, mug of tea in hand.

It was from the Doctor of course. It simply said

“ _Thursday still good? Will be outside school, don’t harm any pudding brains. X_ ”

I laughed and put my mug down on top of an envelope with an official looking heading from London General Hospital.

Both the mug and the letter were forgotten in the rush of essay books and umbrellas as I joined the stream of commuters on a rainy Tuesday morning.

6th March 2015

I shake the rain out of my hair laughing as I kick of my silver heels, the ones with the red soles because they make me feel powerful. I may be more than a bit tipsy but it’s Friday night so if I’m not going to let my hair down now, then when will I?

I walk over to the fridge and unscrew a jar of olives. I pick them out one by one, eating them in small bites as I sit on my kitchen table swinging my bare legs against the cold wood.

I pick up my phone and see two voicemail messages.

The first is from the Doctor.

His Scottish voice rings out across my small flat.

“Clara! How does Sunday night sound to you? There’s a space exhibition in the year 4087 that I think you might like, it will have lots of clever little things for your eyes to inflate, I mean, look at. See you there!”

The second message starts playing automatically.

“Hello, is this Clara Oswald’s phone? We sent a letter a little under a month ago, regarding your routine check-up at the London General last month. I was wondering if-“

I delete the message, suddenly too tired and too drunk to think about anything anymore. Instead I crawl into bed and watch raindrops make tracks down my window until I fall asleep in the early hours of the morning.

25th April 2015

I swallow two painkillers dry as I run out the door, forgoing my morning walk for the motorbike as I’m running horrendously late. I was up until 3 with a killer headache which doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I’ve had a lot of these headaches in the past few weeks, I’m putting them down to stress, its exam season and my pile of marking seems to be drowning me.

I walk through school, each sharp click of my shoe sending a needle through my brain, and each whining voice protesting to homework feels like a barrage of bullets from a machine gun. I make it through to break and collapse in the staffroom, gladly accepting coffee from the History teacher who’s making the rounds.

“You alright love?” She asks as I rub my head tiredly

“Yeah, stress headache, been a busy few weeks” I reply, sipping the hot liquid

My phone rings in my bag, sending a fresh burst of pain through my head. Don’t Stop Me Now floods the staffroom as I scramble to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Clara! Not interrupting am I?”

“No, no not at all, is everything ok Doctor?”

“Yes, it’s all fine, why wouldn’t it be, just phoning to check that you’re ready for tonight, scuba diving with space dolphins under pink stars, typical Monday night, hope you’re excited Miss Oswald”

I can hear the twinkly in his eye even across the space time continuum and I feel awful to let him down.

“Aah Doctor I...can we reschedule? I’m not feeling too good today”

The disappointment and worry are both evident in his reply as we finish the conversation. He promises to come round later with “grapes and other things sick humans seem to find appealing”.

1st August 2015

Everything hurts. I’m so tired and in the week that schools been over for, I finally realise that perhaps I can no longer blame this on messy handwriting and loud football matches.

I phone the London General and book a follow up appointment to my check-up many months ago. They’ve been phoning me on and off for months about an anomaly in my results but I pushed it off on my list of “things to do when I’m not travelling time and space or teaching children the ABC”

I tell the Doctor I have an appointment, of course I tell him, I don’t keep anything from him. He wants to come with but I tell him it’s unnecessary, I probably just need some vitamin D tablets. He tells me its fine but I see the worry in his old blue eyes.

I find a text from him when I wake up. It says so many unspoken things but in practical terms it read

_“Don’t be lasagne. See you later X”_

I want to laugh at how much he’s worrying but that would deny the small pit of fear at the bottom of my own heart.


	2. The Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara Oswald AU following a fixed point in time created by Face the Raven

 

*THE DOCTOR*

1st August 2015

Waiting. Here I am again, waiting for Miss Clara Oswald. I sent her a message this morning, and I’ve spent all day since then worrying about her.

She told me not to, but somebody has to do it.

I tried to distract myself from the empty hours by visiting the Intergalactic Zoo but all I could think of was the way she laughed when I came here with her three months ago. And the way we had to cut the day short because of her headache.

But now it is dark outside and London is going to sleep, but still I wait. I sit outside the Tardis and think about the first time I was properly introduced to Clara. I was younger then, younger and stupider. But I sat outside the Tardis on a summer night just like this one as I waited for her.

I’m never done waiting it would seem.

As the air begins to cool, I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. I pick it up to find a text from Clara.

Four words on a blank screen, it reads “ _We need to talk_ ”

Just as I am about to get inside the Tardis and land it in her living room, my phone lights up again.

“ _Tomorrow_ _X_ ”

I am not quite finished waiting.

 

2nd August 2015

I land the Tardis a short distance from her block of flats and look dismally at the rain splashing down on the already muddy grass. London. What a dump.

I pull at my phone and press her name, ready to hear her tell me that “She got back late last night. All she needs is a few weeks in bed and she’ll be fine by September. Stop fussing Doctor, I told you so”

But instead the voice that answers the call sounds tired. Not the sort of tired that can be fixed with a coffee and three more hours of sleep. The sort of tired that you know goes deep into the bones, and no amount of sleep will fix.

“Doctor”

“Clara. What’s wrong?”

“Doctor I...” She pauses and I hear her breath catch in her throat.

“You..? Go on..? It’s ok Clara, what’s happened?”

“Doctor I...I can’t see you anymore”

Well. This was the last thing on earth that I had been expecting. Now I knew I was right to be worried.

“Clara, speak to me!” I hear myself saying although my thoughts are 50 million miles away. “Tell me what’s wrong!”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“So...now what?”

Her voice comes out stronger now, now that I’ve accepted that she won’t see me. Now she can tell me why she really phoned.

“Doctor. Whatever happens next, don’t let this change you ok? This is my decision and I need you to listen, I need you to let me say what I have to and I need you to let me be brave. I need you to forget me. I need you to get back inside that blue box of yours and fly away. I need you to live your life and run as fast as you can and forget about me. I’m not asking you to promise this to me, I’m giving you an order. I need you to go, and never come back for me again. I know you don’t like endings, so let’s end it before the end.”

Her voice breaks and I can picture the tears falling from her wide brown eyes.

My hearts hurt. Both of them.

“Clara if there’s...if there’s anything I can do..?”

“Go Doctor, just go. Be a Doctor” She whispers and I hear a small beep as she ends the call.

19th October 2015

I tried. I really did try to do what she asked. I ran and I ran, faster and faster, away from everything but towards nothing. I saw stars burn and entire cities turn to dust but I saw it all alone. There was nobody to laugh at me when I tried to be clever, nobody to shout at me when I did the wrong thing. There was nothing except the silence and a galaxy full of nothing.

But I caved in. I picked up my phone, dusty from misuse, and I phoned her.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

Beep.

I try again. Hoping against hope that it was a mistake, this time she’ll pick up.

One ring.

Two

Three

Beep.

I cradle my head in my hands. The only comfort this has bought me is the knowledge that she is still alive. Beyond that, I am running out of hope.

20th November 2015

I wake up from one of the rare nights I remember to sleep.

“Do you know why I never sleep?” I ask to an empty Tardis. It’s a thing I do. Pretend I’m talking to someone, usually Clara.

“I never sleep” I continue “Because every time I close my eyes I see the things I want to forget.”

I pause. Look around, pretending someone is nodding encouragingly, with their big eyes fixed on my face.

“But for the past few months” I sweep around theatrically “I haven’t slept because it takes time away from the one I want to remember”

I stop the theatrics and listen for a moment.

I hear nothing but my own heart beats.

“I’m done sleeping now Clara Oswald. I’m coming to find you. Orders or no orders, I have a duty of care”

I spend all of the following day scribbling down possible coordinates, mapping out possible places she could be. Writing lists of London hospitals, care homes and hospices. The one possibility I avoid is the list of local graveyards. I don’t want to think about that, not whilst there is still hope.

21st November 2015

I found it. The London General. She’s entered there as a hospice patient. I console myself with the fact that she’s not a number in a morgue yet.

I slip in through the doors to the ward and stop at the desk at the front.

The woman looks up from her computer, a kind look in her eyes. They know that most people who enter these doors are entering for the last time.

“Can I help you love?” Her northern accent sends a jolt through my heart; it’s been so long since I’ve spoken to anyone who sounds like that.

I clear my throat “Do you by any chance know a Clara Oswald?”

“Yes love I do and you’re in luck today as it happens”

“Luck?! Is she..better?”

She laughs sympathetically, I wonder how many other people have asked the same thing in the past day alone, how many people she’s had to let down with her next sentence.

“No love, I just mean...she’s awake and not in too much pain right now. You can step through and see her if you want. And...” She stops.

“And..?”

“And..you better say your last goodbye to her, we don’t know if she’ll see out the night. I’m sorry”

She bends her head back over her paperwork. I walk towards the door, more nervous than I’ve ever been in my life, and I’ve lived a long time.

I hesitate by the door, weighing up the possibility of finally doing as she said and running away.

“Well come on in, don’t stand there all day you daft old man”

I jump as a voice comes from an unseen corner of the room. Tentatively I shuffle in, eyes studyng the ugly pattern on the carpet.

“I knew it would be you. You always come in the end. Never do listen to instructions do you?”

“I learnt from the best Miss Oswald” I counter back at her.

I finally find the courage to look at her face and what I see knocks all the breath out of my lunges.

She is a shadow of her former self, her wrists are thin enough for my fingers to circle with room to spare and her eyes are sunk deep into her head. She could easily be overlooked in the mountains of wires surrounding her bed.

But her smile.

Oh her smile.

It is as if she never left.

“Clara I...I’m sorry”

“Don’t apologize. You were only following instructions after all.” She smiled weakly at me.

“Is there anything I can do..? Please let me help you Clara”

“Yes. You can do something. Don’t run. Stay with me”

“Always” I sit at the edge of her bed and intertwine her thin frail fingers with mine.

“You know Doctor...I wish I had done things differently all those months ago. I wish I had told you to stay. I wish I could see the stars one last time, just once. But now it’s too late”

“Oh Clara, Clara, Clara, it’s never too late. Do you know what they say?”

“What?” Her eyes are big, looking up at me, even when clouded with pain and sadness.

“Clara you’ve seen things people wouldn’t believe. All those memories you have. Memories can become stories; let me tell you one last story.”

She closes her eyes and exhales deeply

“Please tell me a story, one last time, but make it a good one eh?”

So I tell her a story. I tell her the story of Clara Oswald and of the planets we saw and the things we saw. And of all the running. An awful lot of running.

And as I tell her the story I watch as her breaths start to come shallower and shallower and her grip on my hand loosens. I stand up and press my lips to her forehead softly, my tears mingling with hers as she cries, even in her sleep.

I am about to leave, to mourn in the silence of my Tardis when she speaks one more time. Her eyes flutter open and she whispers to me, her words like breath on the wind.

“Run. Run you clever boy”

And I do.


End file.
